"Just Friends" is a big sloppy mess of a movie, but it does a fewthings perfectly, hysterically right.

One of those things is letting Ryan Reynolds give the comic performance he's beenbristling to do ever since his glory days on the crappy sitcom "TwoGuys, a Girl and a Pizza Place" -- a show worth watching not forits terrible writing or unimaginative concept, but for its unerringeye for rising talent, which also included "Monk's" Traylor Howardand "Firefly's" Nathan Fillion.

As a former fat kid who finds himself back home after a 10 years absence, hoping to woo (or atleast bed) his unrequited high-school love, Reynolds gets a starturn of over-the-top, unrestrained slapstick hysteria. Comparisonsto Jim Carrey are not undeserved. Thing No. 2, though, is the realshocker: Director Roger Kumble has surrounded Reynolds with gamesupporting players.

Reynolds' Waiting co-star Anna Faris finds acomfortable place over the top as an idiot heiress-turned-singerwhose inability to operate a microwave is responsible, in the bestscrewball sense, for bringing the transplanted Reynolds back to NewJersey one cold Christmas eve.

There's also "Road Trip's" Amy Smart as the girl of Reynolds' dreams, "The Girl Next Door" scene-stealerChristopher Marquette as Reynolds' chatty kid brother, JulieHagerty as their mother, Chris Klein as another reconstructedhigh-school geek out chasing Smart's favors and "Corner Gas"co-star Fred Ewanuick as another member of the class of '95, nowthe local dentist -- which is awfully handy when Reynolds takes apuck to the face during a pick-up hockey game with a bunch ofmiddle-schoolers.

Adam Davis' screenplay is pretty much a flimsyseries of excuses for Reynolds to humiliate himself in one attemptafter another to impress Smart, but the key is that thehumiliations are genuinely funny, and largely driven by Reynolds'horror at his old behaviors reasserting themselves once he getshome. It's not really necessary to intellectualize slapstick, butthen that's the cherry on this silly little cake.

New Line's enhanced-widescreen DVD doesn't pack quite as much supplementalgoodness as one might think -- yes, there's a filmmakers'commentary track and nine production featurettes, but there's not alot of substance to them, unless you want to hear Kumble prattle onabout the "process" of making a Hollywood movie, or watch anelaborate look at the preparation behind the big scene in whichsome Christmas decorations are demolished ... with more prattlingfrom Kumble, who says he wants to "turn it into 'Apocalypse Now.'"

On the other hand, the deleted scenes are pretty funny, the littledocumentary that focuses on Reynolds' fat suit is kind of neat, andthe alternate ending is so stupendously bad that you end uprespecting Kumble and the others a little bit more for realizingthey had to abandon it. So there's that.